1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to distributed data processing systems. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and systems for reporting the availability of servers in a distributed system.
2. Prior Art
Some conventional data processing environments comprise a plurality of user terminals or work stations connected to a central host data processing system. Such data processing environments are typically referred as central or host environments. Increasing in popularity are distributed data processing environments in which user terminals or work stations are connected to plural server data processing systems.
In a typical distributed environment employing a distributed database management system, a group of administrators collectively perform operational tasks associated with management of servers such as Groupware and E mail servers. Both E Mail and Groupware applications usually generate megabytes of information during normal daily operation. The information is typically stored in a log format. The logs are preferably processed with a view to identifying error conditions and thus to eliminating or at least reducing application server failures. However, the processing of such logs is a laborious activity.
One particular problem associated with distributed database environments is to provide statistics relating to server availability for a large distributed system, for example one having more than 250 servers. The prior art tools use either data replication or polling to retrieve the necessary data, which either consume huge disk space and bandwidth or take too long for a large number of servers. More specifically, if data replication is used to retrieve the necessary data, then the same amount of data would need to be stored 250 times, and the same data would need to be transmitted through the network 250 times. This is a waste of substantial storage space and bandwidth.